mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Henri Lesourd <address@hidden>]

Javier Arantegui wrote:

> Hello,
>
> First of all I want to beg your pardon. When I sent my message I didn't want 
> to open TeXmacs GUI Pandora's box.
On the other hand, if one never opens the Pandora's box, one can
never know what the problem is. Therefore, seem rather good that
we discuss these things : since two days, I got more info about
TeXmacs's GUI problems than in 6 months of usual time !

> > In this respect, the problem is that I'm not so sure
> > that simple solutions (e.g., using a standard widget
> > set like Qt, GTK, etc.) would really solve the problem.
> >    
>
> After reading all the messages in this thread, I'm beginning to thing that 
> using an standard toolkit will solve many GUI problems, although I'm not an 
> expert and I could be completely wrong.
>
>  
It would solve some problems. But by just reading what has been said in
the previous messages, one can see that there are also lots of other 
problems
which are not related to this.

But yes, of course, a standard toolkit would improve things.

> > To summarize, the fact that the interface **looks** old
> > fashioned is not the real problem IMHO. The real problem
> > is that it **IS** really hard to use for non-technically
> > inclined people
> >    
>
> And ex-Windows new Linux users. One of the guys I was speaking in my previous 
> message is a recent switcher and he hate TeXmacs interface. Probably the main 
> reason was that many things in TeXmacs are not standard.
>
>  
I agree that this is the real problem (i.e. : many things are not standard).

> I think that TeXmacs has the same problem that had Apple with Mac OS 8 and 9. 
> They could have tried to "modernise" the OS but the number of problems were 
> so big that they had to bite the bullet and start almost from zero to build 
> Mac OS X. 
>
>  
We are not exactly in this situation with TeXmacs, because you don't need
at all to start almost from zero to improve the TeXmacs interface. Rather,
what you definitely need to know is what you want (in this respect, we are
doing progress :-).

> Maybe we need a full time programer to solve all (or, at least, as many as 
> possible) these problems.
I am such a full time programmer :-). (in fact, I do half-time TeXmacs, 
half-time
research on theorem provers interfaces). But without knowing clearly 
what the
problems are, I can do nothing at all, even if I were double-time !

> I wonder how much that would cost and if we were 
> able to get all that money in a reasonable period of time.
>
>  
This, I don't know. As for me, I will wait a little bit, then start
summarizing all the problems we are currently discussing (and I post
the summary to this list for approval/disapproval, looking for missing
items, etc.) : this way, we will have a (hopefully) clear guideline
for planning the needed changes, no matter how it can be done in
the future.